QUICK TAKES

Finance books get a big boost

As the government works on a plan to prevent a financial disaster, readers are seeking out books about economic crises -- past, present and future.

"When the world seems to be ending, people still turn to books for help," says Nancy Sheppard, vice president of marketing at Viking, publisher of Kevin Phillips' "Bad Money: Reckless Finance, Failed Politics, and the Global Crisis of American Capitalism," one of several such works getting a boost in sales.

According to Viking, "Bad Money" sold 5,000 copies in the two days following Phillips' appearance last week on the PBS television program "Bill Moyers Journal." As of Thursday morning, the book was No. 15 on Amazon.com's bestseller list, followed by Naomi Klein's "The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism" at No. 20 and, at No. 23, "Snowball," Alice Schroeder's authorized biography of billionaire Warren Buffett, who announced this week that he would invest at least $5 billion in Goldman Sachs Group Inc.